Follow these three steps to build airline customer loyalty

Passengers become more loyal to your airline when you make it easy for them to get in touch with you. So here’s how to keep the conversation going.

Customers crave convenience.

Eight out of ten people buy more from companies that make it easier to do business with them — so you have to make your airline the most convenient choice. And an excellent place to start is in your contact centre.

Your contact centre is a vital part of delivering an outstanding passenger experience — and its importance continues to grow as personal contact becomes key.

Rather than seeing your contact centre as a ‘cost centre’ — see it as a customer loyalty and ancillary revenue source.

Contacting your airline must be simple.

With the ability to book flights and check in digitally, your customers might not see a single representative of your airline until they board a plane.

So your contact centre plays a crucial role in keeping passengers happy and making sure they receive an exceptional customer experience which exceeds their expectations when they have queries about their travel.

That’s why you must make sure that, when a customer makes contact, you consider it a unique opportunity to engage them. Failing to do so could easily see the customer move to a rival airline instead, where they will have a better experience.

Create the contact centre of the future.

Now, I know it’s a tough task answering every call first time — especially with the huge call volumes you face. But here are three steps you can take to improve your passenger experience and inspire customer loyalty through your contact centre.

1. Keep your phone numbers simple.

As a global organisation with offices in various companies, it can be easy for your list of phone numbers to get out of hand. But, by giving customers simple phone numbers to call — regardless of where they are in the world — you make it easier for passengers to pick up the phone and get in touch with you in the first place.

2. Create a single virtual contact centre in the cloud.

When customers call different, independent contact centres, there’s a good chance they’ll have to start from scratch each time. By bringing your agents around the world together in one virtual contact centre, you deliver a much more consistent ‘single-touch’ experience — one that’s quick and convenient for customers.

3. Make the most of self-service technology.

It becomes easier to answer every call when you reduce the number coming into your contact centre. And you can do this by offering customers the ability to use self-serve options to get the answers to simple queries.

Discover the tools your agents need.

This will then encourage them to stay in touch, allowing you to build a stronger connection with each passenger and gain their loyalty. Personal contact also has the benefit of creating opportunities to increase your ancillary revenues.

It might not seem flashy, but simply giving your customers an easy way to contact your airline could be the key to your success in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

Discover the secrets to personalising your passenger experience through your contact centre — download our new online tool and reveal the technology you need to thrive in the aviation industry.